By Carl Anderson
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, MAY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Packing venue after venue during Benedict XVI’s visit last year, Americans showed an eagerness and enthusiasm to hear his Gospel message that many did not expect. They exhibited a hunger -- for the truth and for moral leadership.
And -- despite a trend in the media to be very critical in their coverage of Benedict XVI -- more than a year later, by wide margins, Americans in general -- and American Catholics in particular -- have a positive view of the pope and a strong desire to hear him speak on the most pressing issues of the day.
A Knights of Columbus-Marist College survey, conducted in late March, found that Americans have a positive view of Benedict XVI by a nearly 3:1 margin (59% to 20%). Among Catholics, he is viewed favorably by a nearly 7:1 margin (76% to 11%).
By a nearly 3:1 margin (4:1 among Catholics), he is seen as “good for the Church.”
That Benedict XVI remains so respected by Americans -- in spite of a 24-hour news cycle often hostile to him and his message -- is a great testament to the Pope’s ability to communicate the Gospel directly to people. It also says something significant about the American people’s desire for the message of hope and love that Benedict XVI preaches in calling us to say “yes” to Jesus Christ.
And that message has not been lost on a great number of the American people, who want to hear him weigh in on the most contentious issues of the day. This underscores a quiet hunger for the truth of the Church’s message, the message enunciated by Benedict XVI.
As state after state redefines marriage, Americans want to hear the Pope’s views on marriage and the family by more than 2:1 (57% to 22%). Among Catholics it’s nearly 5:1 (68% to 14%).
In a country where laws concerning abortion and stem-cell research are increasingly being liberalized, a great number of Americans are eager to hear what Benedict XVI has to say about these life issues (50% to 29% and 60% to 21% among Catholics).
In other words, in spite of a legal and media culture increasingly tolerant of “moral relativism,” Americans -- by large margins -- see Benedict XVI's commitment to Catholic morality as valuable, and are looking for Catholic leadership on core issues.
Americans also want to hear what Benedict XVI has to say about making God a part of our daily lives, sharing time and talent with those in need, the shortsightedness of greed, and the creation of a society where spiritual values play an important role.
In the midst of a serious economic slump brought on by a series of moral failures, Americans want Benedict XVI’s perspective on building a society based on values -- not on greed.
Having seen where moral relativism leads economically, Americans are looking instead for an unwavering moral compass, and looking to the man they know has one.
On the international stage as well, Americans see the pope as very important. Seventy-four percent of Americans -- and 84% of American Catholics -- would describe the Pope as “an important religious leader in the world.” And by more than 2:1 margins both the American people and American Catholics see him as “active and visible.”
On the eve of Benedict XVI’s trip to the Middle East, Americans -- by a 2:1 margin (46% to 23%) -- believed he was sensitive to Muslims, and by a similar margin (48% to 20%), said he was also sensitive to Jewish people. Among Catholics the ratio was 3:1 -- about 60% believed he was sensitive to people of both religions, only about 20% disagreed.
Reflected in these attitudes is something very profound. Despite the occasional flack that the Holy Father has received on his trip to the Holy Land, the fact is that his willingness to put his own life in danger in the unstable and often violent region in order to seek a lasting peace underscores his sensitivities to both sides of Middle East conflict.
And despite occasional criticism, he has not allowed any negativity to distract from what he believes is possible: a peaceful resolution to the violence endemic in the Holy Land.
Those who have taken issue with aspects of the Pope’s trip should pause to consider this, and further, might consider that while past grievances are part of memory and cannot be put aside, such grievances must not become barriers to a real opportunity for peace that is now at hand.
And those who would dismiss our Pontiff -- or some part of his message --should take a lesson from the attitudes catalogued in this survey and should realize that the human heart is restless until it rests in God. This is a fact not lost on Catholic thinkers from Augustine to Benedict XVI himself, who has made bringing human hearts to God a hallmark of his pontificate.
It is an unswerving commitment to the truth -- and the ability through his own prayerfulness to introduce people to Jesus Christ -- that has made Benedict XVI a beacon of moral courage whose message the American people and people worldwide respect and wish to hear. We might call it a triumph of truth over television.
* * *
Carl Anderson is the supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and a New York Times bestselling author.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
"AND HER HAIR SHALL BE OF WHATEVER COLOR IT PLEASES GOD"
for ever thinking, “Finally I have found the Church that speaks with legitimate authority. Faith is handed on here. Truth is passed down through the centuries and like a rock it never changes. Here is a place where I can be told about God.”He passes shou
lders with the man walking out of the Church for ever thinking, “Finally I am leaving this Church that tries to speak with such authority. I have no say in faith and morals. So called truth is pushed down my throat like a rock that I must swallow. I feel stifled at being told who my God is.”As Mom used to say, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” Sometimes the very things that make the Church attractive to one person makes it a turn off for another. Proper authority is one of those things, you might presume, that attracts me to the Church. After all I knelt down before the bishop, placed my folded hands into his before a cathedral full of people and promised proper obedience to him and his successors.
Why would this be attractive? For me it was seeing the fractioning of the rest of Christianity..."
Former Polish president: I would have resigned the presidency rather than legalize abortion
.- Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ex-president of Poland, Lech Walesa, said in Spain this week he would have resigned as president “twenty times” before signing a law that would allow abortion in his country.Walesa made his statements during the Europe Forum together with Miguel Duran of Spain, who is running for a spot in the European Parliament.
The former Polish president explained he would “never” agree with a law that allows abortion because he cannot accept “the killing of innocents,” although he did recognize that no woman ever wants to “kill her child,” but rather is usually motivated by “other situations.”
For his part, Duran criticized the Spanish Socialist government for its political “opportunism” with regards to these issues, especially in a time of crisis. “It would be more important to devote our energies to resolving the problem of the four million unemployed,” he underscored.
“I am bewildered that a government that calls itself progressive would play around with these issues. The government is unfortunately throwing a curtain of blood over the true problem,” Duran charged.
Pentagon Briefings No Longer Quote the Bible
The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.
For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.
The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate...
Britain rules: Pringles are potato chips
LONDON, May 20 (UPI) -- An appeals court in Britain said Wednesday that Procter and Gamble's snack treat Pringles were, technically, potato chips and subject to sales tax...The court heard arguments on whether or not Pringles, made 42 percent from potato and 33 percent from fat and flour, contained enough "potatoness," to be considered a potato chip, or crisp.
The court decided there was "more than enough potato content for it to be a reasonable view that it is made from potato," the Telegraph said.
Exclusive: Newt Gingrich Opens Up on Catholic Conversion and Embracing 'Overt Christianity'
Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Former House speaker and Republican überstrategist Newt Gingrich is off to Europe next week to shoot a documentary on Pope John Paul II's 1979 trip to Poland and how it helped to lay the groundwork for bringing down the Soviet Union. The film, Nine Days That Changed the World, is slated for release this fall.
The trip will take Gingrich and his wife, Callista, to Poland and to Rome for the first time since he converted to Roman Catholicism in March.
I caught up with Gingrich this morning and asked if he expected this trip to be different from previous visits to Rome. He gave a long answer that had him opening up about the reasons for his conversion to an extent he hasn't done publicly before:
I don't know that it's much different. That's part of what led to my conversion is the first time we [he and Callista] went to St. Peter's together. It's St. Peter's. I mean, you stand there and you think, this is where St. Peter was crucified. This is where Paul preached. You think to yourself, two thousand years ago the apostles set out to create a worldwide movement by witnessing to the historic truth they had experienced. And there it is. The last time we were there we were allowed to walk in the papal gardens and you get this sense that is almost mystical.
The moment that finally convinced me [to convert] was when Benedict XVI came here [to the United States] and Callista in the church choir sang for him at the vespers service and all the bishops in the country were there. As a spouse, I got to sit in the upper church and I very briefly saw [Benedict] and I was just struck with how happy he was and how fundamentally different he was from the news media's portrait of him. This guy's not a Rottweiler. He's a very loving, engaged, happy person.
I'd first seen Pope John Paul II when he came to the U.S. when Carter was president and I was a freshman congressman. And I [later] met him as Speaker.
The other sense is that the church has had two of its most powerful popes back to back, in their intellectual ability to engage the secular world on behalf of Christ. And the weight of all that, and going with [Callista] to church every Sunday to the Basilica [in Washington, D.C.], a magnificent church with a wonderful mass. In that sense I felt differently a long time ago, which is why I converted.
And part of me is inherently medieval. I resonate to Gothic churches and the sense of the cross in a way that is really pre-modern.
Callista, who is Catholic and who was key to Gingrich's conversion, added that it was "10 years in the making," starting around the time Gingrich left the House in 1999. I asked Gingrich if his conversion had changed some fundamental political beliefs for him. He said it was the other way around—that political developments had made him more overtly Christian:
The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity. I'll give you an example. As a college student at Emory when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional [in 1963] after 170 years of American history, I didn't notice it. As a graduate student at Tulane I probably would have said it's a good decision.
I've now had an additional 40 years to think about it. And I think about the world of my grandchildren. I don't think American children are healthier, safer, and better off today than they were in 1963. So I have actually become more conservative in response to the failure of the liberal ethos to solve problems.
Parsing the Vatican Newspaper
By George Weigel
The newspaper published by the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano, has created more than a little mischief recently, featuring essays by ill-informed European journalists who imagine that they understand American history, the American political scene, and the grave moral issues being contested in these United States. Pro-administration American journalists and activists have leaped with barely concealed glee on several unfortunate articles in this genre, claiming that they demonstrate that “the Vatican” believes the U.S. Catholic bishops overreacted to Notre Dame’s award of an honorary doctorate of laws to President Obama, and that “the Vatican” is taking a wait-and-see, so-far-so-good attitude toward Obama after the horrors of the arch-demon Bush.
About which, several points must be made.
1. The first thing one learns in Vaticanology 101 is that there is no such thing as “the Vatican.” The Holy See is as complex and confused a bureaucracy as one finds in national governments. Many points of view coexist within the Vatican walls, and there are more than a few curialists who like to talk to reporters. Very few if any of these chatty people count, in terms of expressing the settled judgment of the senior leadership of the Catholic Church. That leadership, when it wishes to make a serious point, does so through its major figures, not through the bureaucratic munchkins and not via commissioned essays in a newspaper that, while published by the Holy See, is not taken all that seriously there...
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Pope to go on Facebook as Vatican embraces online technology
Pope Benedict XVI is to have a Facebook account as part of a Vatican effort to embrace online technology to interact with all one billion members of the global Roman Catholic Church.
By Alastair Jamieson
The initiative, which follows the earlier creation of a YouTube channel for the Pontiff, will also involve iPhone applications and a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, which is scheduled to go live on the Catholic Church's World Communications day on May 24...
Vatican Off Obama’s Itinerary
Posted by Edward Pentin
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 9:04 AM
The White House disclosed over the weekend that President Barack Obama is to make a weeklong foreign tour in July that will include Russia, Italy and Ghana. However, noticeably missing from the list is the Vatican.
It’s been widely thought that Obama would visit Pope Benedict XVI when the president attends the G8 summit in the Italian town of L’Aquila July 8-10. But there was no mention of the Holy Father or the Holy See in the statement, despite the fact that, according to sources in Rome, the president will be staying at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Italy in Rome.
The White House says the reason is because the precise details of his tour have yet to be worked out. “We won’t go into the details of who he’s meeting and the places he’ll be visiting until nearer the time,” said a spokesman, adding that the president’s “primary purpose” for coming to Italy is the G8 summit. “I imagine as we get substantially closer to the date, we’ll have more details...”
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
A Hunger for the Truth
Americans Turn Ear to Benedict XVI
Sunday, May 17, 2009
"Nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us.
I could attend Mass forever, and not be tired.
It is not a mere form of words; it is a great action.
The greatest action that can be on earth. It is. . .the vocation of the Eternal."
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman
What Notre Dame Taught
Notre Dame taught a clear lesson today, in its decision to have President Obama as a commencement speaker and to award him an honorary degree. That lesson is this: American politicians can freely embrace abortion and face no negative consequences at all. Any pro-abortion politician who climbs to the top of Benjamin Disraeli’s “greasy pole” will get nothing but applause and praise from those who now run Notre Dame. The Second Vatican Council defines abortion as an “unspeakable crime.” Not so Notre Dame. Father Jenkins’ effusive introduction of Obama never hinted that abortion is an “unspeakable crime.” According to Father Jenkins, nothing is “unspeakable” because what matters is that we have a “dialogue,” even though “Difference must be acknowledged, and in some cases even cherished.” Amazingly, he praised Obama’s supposed courage in coming to a place that showered him with applause, that vigorously arrested all pro-life demonstrators coming onto campus, and that provided him with a photo opportunity more effective than millions of dollars spent on campaign ads in demonstrating to Catholics that they need not worry about a candidate’s support for abortion in deciding how to vote: “Most of the debate has centered on Notre Dame’s decision to invite and honor the President. Less attention has been focused on the President’s decision to accept. President Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows full well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sancity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research.” How Notre Dame opposed Obama’s policies was not described. In fact, it is not at all clear from Notre Dame’s own statements that it does oppose Obama’s policies on abortion and stem cell research. Notre Dame’s official press release on the commencement noted that Obama’s “stance on abortion was likely unacceptable to some” at Notre Dame. And Father Jenkins could not even bring himself to say that the policies Obama supports are wrong, much less evil. Describing things as they are would apparently interfere with the “dialogue” Father Jenkins is so excited about.
Any politician watching today’s spectacle would have to conclude that the worst risk he runs from such as Notre Dame in supporting abortion is that he will be given an honorary degree, applauded, and told that it is important to “dialogue.” This lesson is especially harmful to the dwindling band of pro-life Democrats. Given the national Democratic party’s ironclad support for abortion, pro-life Democrats take a stance that prevents them from aspiring to their party’s presidential nomination. And, if such politicians take a pro-life stance for fear of Catholic opposition, Notre Dame sent a powerful signal today that they limit their ambitions for no good reason.
Obama has not been reticent in voicing his support for the “unspeakable crime” of abortion. Obama does not even claim to be “personally opposed” to abortion. Instead, he said during the campaign that he would not want his daughters “punished” with a baby if they engaged in premarital sex. His unstinting advocacy for abortion is a matter of public record, and he did not retreat from it at all at Notre Dame. Instead, he indicated in his speech that he has already learned that he has nothing to fear from Catholic prelates eager for “dialogue.” His praise for the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago obscured the salient point that nothing Bernardin said or did caused Obama to modify in any way his support for abortion. Even some of the Obama lines that drew applause at Notre Dame at least hinted at his opposition to Catholic teaching. Obama drew applause when he called for “reducing unintended pregnancies”—a likely reference to the federal funding for artificial contraception that Obama supports—and when he called for “health care policies” with “respect for the quality of life”—the same terminology used by those advocating for euthanasia.
It should not have been like this at a Catholic university, particularly at a Catholic university as inextricably intertwined with the American Catholic idenity as Notre Dame. As John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, “But today, in many people’s consciences, the perception of [abortion’s] gravity has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behaviour and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.” By awarding Obama an honorary degree and showering him with applause and praise, Notre Dame has assisted mightily in obscuring the gravity of abortion. And, when Obama appoints the next pro-abortion justice to the Supreme Court, signs a law providing for the federal funding of abortion, or signs the Freedom of Choice Act—all things he is committed to doing—he will be able to say, with some justice, that he is doing so with the imprimatur of Fr. Jenkins and the nihil obstat of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees.